The Ladies Lindores

yours! Do you think I want an old fellow like you to teach me my duty to⁠—to⁠—the girl I’m going to marry! Don’t drive a man mad by way of doing him a favour. I’m not ungrateful. I’ll not forget it. Whatever I can do!⁠—but for God’s sake don’t hit a fellow when he’s down⁠—don’t dig at me as if I hadn’t a feeling in me,” cried Rintoul. He felt more and more like a whipped schoolboy, half crying, half foaming at the mouth, with despite and humiliation. It is impossible to describe the grim pleasure with which Rolls looked on. He liked to see the effect of his words. He liked to bring this young lord to his knees, and enjoy his triumph over him. But there are limits to mortal enjoyment, and the time during which his visitor was permitted to remain with him was near an end. Rolls employed the few minutes that remained in impressing upon Rintoul the need for great caution in his evidence. “Ye maun take awfu’ care to keep to the truth. Ye’ll mind that a’ ye have to do with is after you and me met. An oath is no’ a thing to play with⁠—an oath,” said Rolls, shaking his grey head, “is a terrible thing.”

Rintoul, in his excitement, laughed loud. “You set me an excellent example,” he said.

“I hope so,” said Rolls gravely. “Ye’ll mind this, my lord, that the accused is no’ on his oath; he canna be called upon to criminate himself⁠—that’s one of the first grand safeguards of our laws. Whatever ill posterity may hear of me, there’s no’ one in the country can say that Thomas Rolls was mansworn!”

Rintoul left Dunnotter with feelings for which it would be difficult to find any description in words. There was a ringing in his ears as he drove across the bare moorland country about Dunnotter, a dizzying rush of all his thoughts. He had the feeling of a man who had just escaped a great personal danger, and scarcely realises, yet is tremblingly conscious in every limb, of his escape. He threw the reins to his groom when he approached Dunearn, and walked through the little town in the hope of seeing Nora, notwithstanding her disavowal of him, to pour out into her ears⁠—the only ones into which he could breathe it⁠—an account of this extraordinary interview. But it was in vain that he traced with eager feet every path she was likely to take, and walked past Miss Barbara’s house again and yet again, till the lamps began to be lighted in the tranquil streets and to show at the windows. The evening was chilly, and Rintoul was cold with agitation and anxiety. He felt more disconsolate than any Peri as he stood outside, and looking up saw the windows all closed so carefully, the shutters barred, the curtains drawn. There was no chance for him through these manifold mufflings, and he did not venture to go and ask for her, though she was so necessary to him⁠—not only his love and his affianced wife, as he said to himself, but his only confidant⁠—the sole creature in the world to whom he dared to speak of that which filled his mind and heart. It was with the most forlorn sense of abandonment and desolation that he turned his face towards the house in which he was so important, and so much love awaited him, but where nobody knew even the A.B.C. of his history. His only confidant was offended Nora, who had vowed to see him no more.

XLVI

After this there ensued a brief pause in the history of the family in all its branches: it was a pause ominous, significant⁠—like the momentary hush before a storm, or the torrent’s smoothness ere it dashes below. The house of Lindores was like a besieged stronghold, mined, and on the eve of explosion. Trains were laid in all directions under its doomed bastions, and the merest breath, a flash of lightning, a touch of electricity anywhere, would be enough to bring down its defences in thunders of ruin. It seemed to stand in a silence that could be felt, throwing up its turrets against the dull sky⁠—a foreboding about it which could not be shaken off. From every side assaults were preparing. The one sole defender of the stronghold felt all round him the storm which was brewing, but could not tell when or how it was to burst forth. Lord Lindores could scarcely have told whence it was that this vague apprehension came. Not from any doubt of Rintoul, surely, who had always shown himself full of sense, and stood by him. Not from Edith⁠—who had, indeed, been very rebellious, but had done her worst. And as for Carry: Carry, it was true, was left unfettered and her own mistress, so to speak; but he had never found any difficulty with her, and why should he fear it now? An uneasiness in respect to her future had, however, arisen in his mind. She had made that violent protest against interference on the night of the funeral, which had given him a little tremor of alarm; but why should he anticipate danger, he said to himself? It might be needful, perhaps, to proceed with a little delicacy, not to frighten her⁠—to go very softly; but Carry would be amenable, as she had always been. And thus he endeavoured to quiet the apprehensions within him.

There was one thing, however, which the whole family agreed upon, which was, in an uneasy sense, that the presence of Beaufort in their neighbourhood was undesirable. If they agreed in nothing else they agreed in this. It was a shock to all of them to find that he had not departed with Millefleurs. Nothing could be more decided than Rintoul was in this respect. So far as that went, he was evidently disposed to take to the full the same view as